A Week in Wall Street By One Who Knows by Frederick Jackson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A Week in Wall Street by One Who Knows by Frederick Jackson is a unique read. Unfortunately, as I started the reading journey of this book, I’ve been unable to find information about the author or origin of this work. What follows is my review peppered with some historical perspective.
This novel was published in 1841 and likely took inspiration from the economic Panic of 1837 which brought on a recession in the US (pre Federal Reserve). It’s a unique fictional story set on Wall Street about speculative stock trading in a fictional company, Morrison Kennel, told via short chapters with various traders, company managers, bankers and shadowy characters coming into and out of the frame.
I have to remind myself that information was hard to come by in 1841 so you couldn’t Google “stock speculation” or “stock bubbles,” or even access to a library would have been limited in most areas of the country. Therefore, a story like “A Week in Wall Street by One Who Knows” acts as an authority and bridges the knowledge gap by writing a fictional story about how Wall Street stock speculation worked in the late 1830s and early 1840s.
The prose is lacking, but the content gives a reader fascinating insight of Wall Street during this time frame.